“And I agree with you, Cornelia,” Melinda’s voice came from behind them.
“Why, thank you!”
“Do we need to take it as a matter of course that politician is synonymous with duplicitous scumbag?” Melinda asked. “I think not.”
“Why, thank you again.”
“What he did hurt no one,” Knight countered.
“Unlike the time he was accused of putting campaign donations to personal use?” Lacy said. “And that, by the way, is the military point of view,” she tagged on with sharp, mocking sarcasm.
“Charges dropped. Not a thing proven,” Knight crowed.
“On a technicality, if I recall,” Lacy insisted.
“No, that’s not true. It was not a technicality. And come on! Think about this logically! Why would a man worth some one hundred and fifty million dollars misappropriate a lousy ten thousand of campaign donations? Get real! And that’s a personal fortune of one hundred and fifty million dollars, if I may repeat. One fifty mil, aside from his wife, who’s got something in excess of thirty or forty million dollars from her film production company.”
“I think you’re getting a bro-crush on him, Doc,” Lacy said.
“Yeah, that’s a good comeback,” Knight said with the weirdest petulant inflection. “All I’m saying is that—”
“It’s not a victimless crime,” Melinda interjected.
“Say what?”
“The sex industry dehumanizes and objectifies women, and—”
“Says the bodybuilder posing in her little string bikini.”
“That’s not even the same thing!” Melinda snapped, and Cornelia would have been willing to put down some money and bet that Melinda was aching to hit Knight at that point. “Bodybuilding is empowerment.”
Knight rolled his eyes.
And although she was no longer in competition shape, Cornelia was certain that Melinda could still pack a wallop of a punch. For his safety’s sake, Cornelia thought, not unamused, that Knight, no matter the street brawler he might once have been, was wise to control his derisive mannerisms and sarcasm.
Knight started to say, “The fact is that Markwell wasn’t even married when he was with the hookers, and—”
But Rick’s measured and reasonable voice suddenly cut him off. “Look, the fact is that Senator Bling Markwell somehow managed to spend three terms so far in Washington, despite the fact that he spends as much time pissing off both sides of the aisle as most other politicians claim they try to reach across it. And now he’s going to want to start injecting himself into our investigation.”
“And I’m sure that in this case that’s not a good thing at all,” Lacy said. “I mean, come on. The guy’s just a creep.”
Cornelia couldn’t help chuckling now. Both Rick and Lacy were right, she realized. Markwell’s political survival skills were almost supernatural, as was his ability to get himself into trouble on a weekly basis due to his penchant for a fast-living, high-spending lifestyle. Exactly as Knight had said, Markwell was a supporter of the military, especially spending on healthcare and benefits for veterans—a former army national guardsman himself—yet his weekends in a Mineral County bordello were made public a week after he received an endorsement for his reelection campaign by the League of Women Voters. While the revelations about his sex life might have cost Markwell not just the League’s support, but the local Republican Party’s nomination, he soon ran on his own newly formed High Desert Libertarian ticket. He took advantage of the way a pair of unpopular Republican and conservative-Democratic candidates split a sizable right-leaning Nevada electorate, and barely squeaked back into office with the independent/libertarian support.
“He’s carrying way too much controversial baggage,” Cornelia said quickly before…before, she supposed, Rick could have said something in support of Brandon Markwell that would have really disappointed her. With no comment from Rick forthcoming, she added, “I really don’t think our work now needs that kind of a distraction.”
“We might not have a choice,” Kristine Murakami said over her shoulder.
Leading their party toward a conference room where a group of the local globe-sensitives had been gathered, Murakami had, until now, been ignoring the debate about Senator Bling.
“From what I heard,” Murakami said, “he’s about to fly in from the Big Island. He’s playing golf down there at the Four Seasons Resort with some showbiz people. He still seems to think that his Vegas magicians will help solve the globe mystery.”
“They don’t call him Senator Bling for nothing,” Lacy quipped. “The Four Seasons’ got some ten-grand-a-night suites.”
“Well, once he gets here, maybe Doctor Knight can chat with him.”
5.
“Doctor Murakami, look,” Sam Rutkowski said, and Cornelia thought that Frederic Graham, standing next to him in his crisp tropical-white navy uniform, was about to nod in enthusiastic agreement any moment now. “Here are some hard facts. Unless we get these people to cooperate and get some solid answers—that hard data you have been talking about since we found out about all this hum and buzz and vibration business—well, the word could come down from the Pentagon that this is still a national security issue, and we have the right to take whatever steps are necessary to get more cooperation.”
Kristine Murakami’s entire countenance clouded, and Cornelia couldn’t blame her. You couldn’t force the impossible, no matter what kind of military-style bullying, demanding, or bureaucratic pressure you attempted to throw at it. Murakami and the rest of the air force doctors she had brought along from Travis had just spent over an hour in the fifth-floor conference room with four of the local globe-sensitives, and emerged no wiser as a result.
“Cooperation, Colonel?” Murakami replied in the measured tones that best illustrated that novelty T-shirt slogan and Internet meme favorite, Stress: the overriding impulse that keeps you from beating the crap out of someone who desperately deserves it. “These people have come down here of their own free will. They’ve undergone a battery of tests that tell us nothing more than—”
“And now you told them they can go home?” Frederick Graham cut in. “How do we know they will come back when you want to run more tests?”
“We know where they live.”
“And if they go into hiding?”
“Do we want to turn these people into our prisoners now?” Murakami shot back. “Like I was saying, there’s nothing at all to indicate there’s anything out of the ordinary about any of them. I mean, just look at their files! They’re just like David Kwan. Nothing unusual. One has high cholesterol. Another’s blood sugar is too high, for God’s sake. He’s already been told to lay off the candy bars or he’ll have a nice case of Type 2 diabetes. Then we have buzz-sufferer number three. Nothing more than an old college football injury to his left knee. The fourth one had kidney stones removed when she was thirty-two, does yoga three times a week, and she’s on the pill because her husband’s been feeling frisky a lot lately and they can’t afford a third child. In other words, completely normal, average people with normal, average health issues.”
“And they can all hear something no one else does,” Rutkowski replied, unmoved. “Or at least something the majority of the people can’t hear.”
Cornelia noticed Murakami breaking eye contact with Rutkowski, letting her impatient, frustrated gaze sweep over the lobby outside the conference room.
“And they can hear something, Doctor,” Rutkowski pressed, the edge of his voice sharpening, “that’s tied to a phenomenon that has people at each other’s throats all over the world.”
“I haven’t forgotten why we’re here, Colonel. And I know full well that we need to keep doing every test and try to find anything we can. But you can’t force scientific results by yelling and threatening the way you would with boot-camp recruits.”
“And are you ready
to explain that to some idiot senator in about a day?” Graham asked. “An idiot senator who, by the way, just happens to be on—”
“On the Armed Services Committee, I know.”
“And now he wants to know everything we’re doing about this,” Rutkowski jumped in. “Maybe because he’s up for reelection. Maybe he’s had another bimbo eruption. Maybe he was caught saying something stupid again about legalizing drugs, or prostitution, or enjoying a threesome, or God knows what, and he wants to divert attention away from another budding scandal.”
Cornelia choked down a laugh now, but her near guffaw caught Rutkowski’s eye. He, Murakami, and Graham acknowledged her with brief eye contact. What almost made Cornelia laugh was the marine lieutenant colonel’s up-to-date knowledge of Washington gossip.
“If we can’t show any progress,” Graham said, “the Pentagon will be after us.” Then his voice lowered, but he made eye contact with Cornelia. “And then we might be told to round these people up…and start turning off the cameras and stop being so concerned with diplomacy and transparency. And it doesn’t matter what this senator says about transparency, you mark my words.”
“All right,” Murakami replied. She, too, looked at Cornelia for a moment. “I get it….” Except her voice faded out as her gaze drifted toward something on the far side of the lobby. “All of these floors are carpeted,” she then said.
What? Cornelia thought, and followed her gaze.
Apparently what had caught Murakami’s eye was a man in a custodian’s gray-green overalls moving a wheeled bucket and mop. On one side of the lobby—the side opposite of the one they were looking at—stood the bank of elevators for the hospital’s general staff, patients, and visitors. Where she and Murakami were looking, however, ran a corridor toward a corner that led off to the service elevators.
It made sense, Cornelia thought, since that was the area where the custodian had emerged from.
But what is he doing here? a voice in her head whispered. Murakami’s right. It’s all carpeting here. What do you mop?
“What’s that?” she heard Rutkowski asking now.
Cornelia, too, had noticed another newcomer. Aside from the custodian, the globe study-team in the lobby was now joined by a man in a white lab coat, a stethoscope around his neck and a clipboard in his hand. Although standing about five feet and ten inches or so tall, he was of a slight, unexercised build with an uncombed thatch of frizzy red hair and a pasty, freckled complexion.
The stethoscope…the clipboard…exactly what you’d expect a doctor to look like.
And no one else in the lobby took notice of him.
What’s wrong with this picture?
“What floors did that man come to wash?” Cornelia heard Murakami ask.
“What are you talking about?” Graham replied. “Maybe he’s going to do the bathrooms.”
“I’ve been to the bathroom. It’s been freshly cleaned.”
But Cornelia’s own unease was fed by the man who looked so much like a doctor. She kept studying his appearance, his movements, as he was about to pass the spot Lacy milled around, talking with Vince Rafferty, Melinda, Matt, and….
Where is his name tag? Cornelia wondered to herself as the stranger passed within three feet of Lacy. And why did he come out of the service elevator?
The full realization hit Cornelia and sent a shock of adrenaline through her body.
A doctor in a lab coat like that would have something identifying him. A name tag pinned onto the coat or embroidered on it. But this guy did not….
And he was making eye contact with Cornelia. In a split instant he knew that she knew.
His left hand let the clipboard drop while his right one went into the lab coat’s pocket. As he withdrew a scalpel he lunged toward Lacy, snaking his left arm around her and slashing the scalpel at her throat.
6.
“Let the hostages go!” the phony doctor screamed, brandishing the scalpel wickedly close to Lacy’s throat and face. “We know what this is all about. The people will know! You can’t hide the truth. These people know where it will happen next. You won’t make them disappear.”
“What the hell?” Cornelia heard Rutkowski growl nearby. His voice was just about the only one among the various gasps, curses, and pleas for the hostage-taker to calm down and let Lacy go.
Cornelia saw Rafferty just about paralyzed by terror. Melinda, Matt, and Ian were all trying to steady their voices and implore the attacker to put his weapon down.
“You won’t get away with this,” Lacy’s assailant yelled. “The government can’t silence its people.”
“The experiencers,” Cornelia now heard Rick’s voice nearby.
When she glanced in his direction, she noticed him return her look.
“The hum. The experiencers,” he said. “He thinks we’re here to silence them.”
“Stay back!” the attacker yelled, apparently aiming his words at anyone within earshot and anyone getting heroic ideas. “You let the people go and I won’t hurt her!”
Except the attacker was so focused on everyone else in the lobby that he neglected the potential problem he held with his left arm. He had apparently gone after Lacy because she was a target of opportunity—close, within arm’s reach, one of two women, and her petite build a better choice than the muscular, formidable-looking Melinda. But he could not have known about Lacy’s military training and apparently very-well-honed hand-to-hand combat skills. One moment he was standing upright, clutching Lacy against his body, and the next his height and weight had been turned against him. With staggering speed, Lacy used her lower center of gravity to pull her attacker off balance, flip him over her head as she dropped to one knee, and plow him into the floor. As she did so, she twisted his elbow and wrist into a vicious-looking lock, forcing him to give up his grip on the scalpel while at the same time, no doubt, snapping his joints and tearing cartilage and ligaments.
The disarmed attacker’s shrieks of pain rang across the lobby.
As blood-curdling as the stranger’s cries of excruciating agony and pure helpless rage were, the people in the lobby were relieved the threat had been neutralized. Cornelia certainly was. She, as everyone else must have, lowered her guard and took a breath of relief.
But it was a mistake to do so.
“Let him go! Get back!” a man’s voice howled over the din of the lobby, drowning out even the cries of pain ululating out of Lacy’s attacker.
Then a gunshot thundered across the hall, followed by screams.
The custodian! Cornelia realized and, just as she predicted, saw the man in the overalls wave a large automatic handgun around. But if he was the partner of the man in the lab coat….
“Lacy!” Cornelia gasped, looking for her teammate.
Where had that shot been aimed?
But relief followed a moment later. Lacy was still crouching next to her attacker, still gripping his arm and twisting it in a grotesquely unnatural angle. She was, just like everyone else in the lobby, thankfully, unhurt.
The fake custodian, in the meantime, kept waving his gun around, clutching it in both hands now, a wild-eyed look of adrenaline-fueled frenzy and fear contorting his features.
“I said let him go!” the gunman screamed, haphazardly waving the pistol in Lacy’s general direction, and squeezed off a shot.
While Lacy remained unhurt—the shooter looked inept with that gun, Cornelia recognized—waves of screams and shouts trilled across the lobby and people hit the floor. Lacy, Cornelia was glad to see, was smart enough not to stand her ground but let go of her captive’s arm, hit the floor flat, and attempt to roll away.
Then, as the shooter got his wish—his partner freed from Lacy’s grip—he seemed to hesitate, unsteady, unsure of what to do. The redheaded man in the lab coat had been released but he was apparently still delirious from pain. He still lay on th
e ground, writhing in pain, completely disconnected from reality.
The gun shifted in the shooter’s hand nervously, and Cornelia’s heart managed to hammer even faster than it had before. Spiked on adrenaline and in the grip of fear, her mind was still capable of clear and logical reasoning. The gunman’s twitchy, panicky movements and his unsteady command of his weapon signaled an amateur. And that, Cornelia decided, was potentially more dangerous than if had they been accosted by some highly trained assassin. This guy was a complete live wire, unstable, unpredictable, and deadly.
A second later something happened that had Cornelia wondering if they were about to all escape this madness or if their death sentences had just been signed. An alarm whooped through the lobby and, Cornelia guessed, throughout the hospital.
This guy’s either going to run for it or he’s about to take down as many people as he can.
The shooter shifted back and forth on his feet and steadied his grip on his pistol.
Oh no! Oh no! Cornlia’s mind screamed.
But then the gunman spun around and bolted, sprinting toward the service corridor. Moments later Cornelia could hear the slamming of a metallic door. The guy had retreated into the stairwell.
What happened next Cornelia would never be able to explain.
There was a blur of movement on her right and when she turned to examine it, Cornelia saw Rick jumping to his feet. “Son of a bitch!” she heard him hissing as he ran after the gunman.
Perhaps his previous cop identity had taken over, Cornelia realized as he darted around the corner of the service corridor. Running after a fleeing gunman was what Rick would have done when he was still on the L.A.P.D.
And back when she was still a reporter, Cornelia would have run after a cop chasing a gunman. Now her old instincts took over as well, and she ran after Rick.
7.
Cops and reporters were supposed to charge into the thick of the action, Cornelia knew, but now she wondered what made Lacy follow them. She had been in the Signal Corps in the army, a techie behind a computer. Perhaps she was just pissed at having been shot at by this guy, and seeing him trying to escape was stoking her ire. The fact that Vincent Rafferty followed Lacy made sense. He was, more than likely, going nuts over seeing her in the line of fire again, so he stoically ran up the stairwell after them, trying to help the woman he was falling for. Military men Rutkowski and Graham coming along made some sense. They were the ones ultimately responsible for the globe study-group and the colonels might have been, Cornelia ventured a guess, regretting not bringing along the SEALS or the Air Force Combat Controllers. But bringing up the rear behind the military brass were Dan Knight and Tony Griffin with his camera. So eight unarmed people were chasing the gunman up the stairwell now. The direction of the chase itself was something else Cornelia couldn’t quite understand.
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